| Suggest 3 ways to help students develop their vocabulary. | We can help our students learn vocabulary by:
1. Emphasising new terms during instructions,
2. Providing examples in context to illustrate the concepts represented by the terms,
3. Encouraging our students to use the new vocabulary in discussions and other classroom activities (M. Collins, 2010; Manolitsis et al., 2011; Reutzel & Cooter, 2012).
For example, if students encounter the term 'tarmac' in a story, we can show a picture of an airport, point out the location of the tarmac, and ask students to use the term in a sentence. |
| Suggest 4 ways to help students develop grammar and syntax through writing. | 1. Having students do as much writing as possible is the most effective way to help them develop grammar and syntax, and this applies to all content areas.
2. Good writing is a skill, and the more our students practice, the better writers will become (Tompkins, 2014).
3. We can also prepare model paragraphs, short essays, and responses to questions, which provide positive examples of the grammatical and syntactic ideas we are teaching.
4. We can model correct grammatical responses to students without criticisms, and have them practice these in their speech. |
| Suggests 3 ways to help students develop reading and listening skills. | 1. Engage with students' established background knowledge as this will influence their level of motivation to practice listening and speaking.
2. If they lack background knowledge, we can help them by supplementing our lessons with high-quality examples, demonstrations, pictures, video clips and other representation that illustrates key ideas (Collins, 2010; Manolitsis et. al, 2011).
3. Providing concrete, immersive experiences is highly recommended to help learners engage with the learning material.
4. The practice of active listening along with frequent reminders also helps. For example, encouraging students to ask questions and reminding them to periodically stop and ask themselves if they understand what they've just read. |
| How do we help students develop their speaking abilities? | 1. To learn to speak well, students need practice, just as is the case with their writing or any other skill (Tomasello, 2011).
2. When we ask questions, we should direct them to the whole class, give all students time to think about and organise a response, and then call on an individual to respond. When they struggle, we can then help them put their thoughts into words.
3. We can supplement whole-class instructions with small group work to provide students with additional opportunities to practice their language skills. Be sure to that this part of the lesson is carefully planned and monitored so students stay on task. |
| Should we consider students' emotions when promoting language development in classrooms? | Yes, language development requires that students practice in emotionally safe and supportive environments. Create an emotional climate in your classroom that makes students feel safe as they practice language.
For example, practice saying:
1. "That's okay. We all struggle to express ourselves. The more you practice, the better you'll get at it."
2. "We should listen politely when a classmate is trying to explain his or her thoughts. We're here to support each other."
3. "That's okay. We all struggle. Give it a try, and say as much as you can, and we'll take it from there." |
| For elementary school students (5-10 years old), what are some developmentally appropriate practices to promote language development? | 1. At this age, language development in children will be the teacher's most important goal.
2. Active learning both whole-group and small-group activities, together with writing about the topics they're learning are essential.
3. Sensitivity to gender and cultural issues has to be taken into consideration. For example, boys' language skills develop less rapidly than girls', and some cultural minorities may not be comfortable interacting with adults as conversation partners (Berk, 2013).
4. Questioning is one of the most powerful tools that you can have for promoting language development. It not only provides students with access to advanced vocabulary and modeled correct sentence constructions, but it also provides them with opportunities to practice their own developing language skills.
5. Young students' working memories are still developing, which limits their ability to understand complex directions (Jack, Simcock, & Hayne, 2012). Simplifying directions is important to these students. |
| How should we work with students in middle schools (11-13 years old) to promote language development? | 1. Social interaction becomes increasingly important for middle schoolers, which presents both opportunities and challenges for their teachers. When well organised, group work can provide opportunities to expose children to different perspectives and to develop their communication skills.
2. Creating groups that are developmentally and culturally diverse provides students with opportunities to learn from each other.
3. Middle schoolers' listening skills are still developing, so writing definitions and other important ideas on the board or document camera is important.
4. Middle schoolers' listening skills and complex sentence structures and their understanding of figurative speech and metaphorical language are also developing. Using these metaphors and similes provide opportunities to talk about language and its central role in communication (Berk, 2013). |
| When working with high school students (14-18 years old), how do we promote their language development? | 1. High school students want to appear grown up and sometimes hesitant to participate in whole-class activities, so explaining why you call on everyone as equally as possible to encourage participation is important.
2. High school students often want to hide the fact that they don't understand an idea, so they are often reluctant to ask questions. So the fact that no questions are asked doesn't necessarily mean that students understand what you're teaching. Questioning, particularly as a form of informal assessment, is important with these students.
3. Provide high school students ample opportunity to practice writing, regardless of your content area. This will help develop language and thinking skills, encourages deeper understanding, and prepares them for college or the working world, where writing ability is essential.
4. Despite extensive practice in texting, high school students still need instruction in formal conventions of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and practice with writing is even more important that it has been in the past (Pence Turnbull & Justice, 2012).
5. High school students get better at writing by practicing, so the more practice you provide, the better writers they'll become. |
